Incredible.
Farragut was sixty years old, his square jaw clean-shaven. The sun that came in through the aft windows glinted off the bands of gold braid that circled his cuffs, winked off the double row of buttons down the front of his dark blue frock coat. His lean, hard body was perfectly complemented by the frock coat. He had been wearing navy blue for forty years. It seemed very odd to him when, on one of those few occasions, he found himself in civilian clothing of a different color.
He read over the report, one of an endless stream of reports he was writing.
USS Hartford
Ship Island, March 5, 1862
DEAR SIR: The Pensacola arrived here on the 2d, just in time to escape a severe norther, which has now been blowing for nearly six hours. Had she encountered it, God knows when she would have arrived. They represent the engines as perfectly worthless. The engineer is afraid for the lives of his men, and said it would not last an hour longer; that I will test.
He set the report aside. His eyes, which were not terribly strong, were starting to hurt. Reports, orders, requisitions, dispatches, he was sick of it all. He had come to fight the enemy and all he did was sit at his desk. For now.
He looked down at the sundry papers spread over the desk in front of him—newspapers, reports, personal correspondence. Stolen material, all. He felt a flush of guilt. Absurd. This was war.
Warm, briny air wafted through the open window, rustled the paper. A month before he had been in New York City, where bitter, numbing wind funneled in through the Narrows and made the waterfront a frigid misery. His hands, he recalled, had been so numb he was hardly able to hold a pen. But now he was riding at anchor at Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi, lovely, semitropical, water the color of turquoise. He enjoyed the sun and the warm air. He enjoyed looking out over the ships under his command.
The warm air carried on it the smell of coal smoke. USS Colorado had arrived an hour before, was picking her way slowly though the anchorage. She was a big bastard, a forty-gun steam frigate, eight-to ten-inch Dahlgren pivots. She drew nearly twenty-three feet aft. Farragut did not know if he could get her over the bar and into the Mississippi River.
They would be fighting a river war with a blue-water navy, making ships do something they were never intended to do. Foote’s fleet, the “Pook Turtles,” they were made for this kind of fighting, perfect for the Western River Theater. But not the Hartford, and certainly not the Colorado.
The marine at the cabin door announced Henry H. Bell, captain of the fleet, responding to the summons Farragut had issued moments before. Farragut called, “Come!” and Bell stepped sharply across the cabin’s deck, stopped at the desk, saluted, crisp and businesslike.
“Captain,” Farragut said, returning the salute. He spread his hands, indicating the papers on the desk. “Here is the booty from our raid on the Biloxi post office.”
“You should have had them take gold, sir. Laurens de Graffe or Jean Laffite could have made their fortunes with such a raiding party.”
Farragut smiled. “There’s gold enough here for me. You should see what is in these papers.” He picked one up, held up the headline. Surrender of Nashville!
“Nashville, sir?” Bell looked taken aback, and then he smiled.
“The Rebels suffered a defeat at Donaldsonville as well. Grant and Foote are sweeping south along the Mississippi. New Orleans is in a panic. The papers speak volumes of discontent. It’s all collapsing around them, Henry. When we take New Orleans, I do believe the Southern morale and their will to fight will just melt away.”
“Wonderful, sir.”
For just over twenty days now, Farragut had been admiral in charge of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, chosen by Welles and Lincoln not just because they trusted him to blockade but because they trusted him to fight.
The rumble of an anchor chain, and Farragut and Bell looked out the starboard windows to see Colorado ’s anchor kick up a spout of water as it plunged into the harbor.
“Captain Alden should have news of Porter, sir,” Bell said.
“Yes, he should. I hope it is good.” Farragut was already sending ships up the Mississippi, up to the Head of the Passes, up as far as the forts, probing the Rebels, feeling them out. But the first real attack would be David Dixon Porter’s. Porter had with him a convoy of old schooners and scows, each mounting a squat thirteen-inch mortar, able to lob heavy exploding shells over the walls of the Confederate fortifications. This mortar fleet would soften Forts Jackson and St. Philip up some before Farragut’s big ships blasted their way past.
“If I may, sir…” Bell was hedging, wanted to ask a question he was not certain would be well received.
“Yes?”
“If I may, when do you think we will make the push to New Orleans?” As it happened, Farragut had been thinking along those very lines, and so was well prepared to answer that question. He had been calculating when Porter would arrive, how long it might take to get the big ships over the bar, how much pounding the forts would need.
He planned to head up to the forts himself in a few days in one of the smaller ships, take a firsthand look at what they would be facing.
“Six weeks,” Farragut said decisively. “I do believe we will be ready to take New Orleans in six weeks’ time.”
40
There was neither foundry nor machine shop in the place Yazoo City. The ship was in a very incomplete condition. There was not a sufficiency of iron on hand to finish the entire ship.
— Lieutenant George Gift, CSS Arkansas
They tore into the Yazoo River ’s deckhouse with iron bars.
Samuel Bowater stood on the foredeck, watched Artemus Polkey wander back and forth, looking over the deckhouse like a sculptor looking at a block of marble, trying to decide where to make that first, crucial cut.
The sun was just up, the river and the boat were still bathed in blue-gray dawn light, and already Samuel wanted to scream, It’s not a work of art, just tear the damned thing apart! But he held his tongue.
At last Artemus nodded, patted the planking right around the door to the galley. “Right here,” he said. “We’ll start takin her down from here.” He hefted a four-foot wrecking bar, and with a swiftness and economy of motion which surprised Bowater he slammed the chisel end into the plank and with half a dozen levers of the bar dropped a five-foot section of plank onto the deck.
He nodded again, issued orders to the men milling about, the ship’s carpenters Polkey had hired and the Yazoo Rivers who were assigned to him, essentially every man who was not on the iron wagon train.
“Let’s rip her up, boys!” Polkey shouted, and the men fell to with a will. The morning was torn apart with the crack of wood, the squeal of protesting nails being wrenched free. The men were sweating in the cool air. Wanton destruction was in their blood.
Bowater wandered down to the dock, watched the progress for a few minutes. He had been wrong about Polkey, and he was glad of it. Artemus Polkey deliberated, chose wisely, but for all his age and girth, he was a hurricane once the decision was made.
Satisfied with the destruction taking place, Bowater walked over to the carpenter’s shed which had been transformed into an office for him. He opened the protesting door, stepped on nails and sawdust and wood chips on the floor, sat on the stool in front of the high desk. He looked at the papers, preprinted forms, pen, ink, laid out in front of him, and he sighed.
This was his lot for now, the lot of the ship’s captain. Reports, requisitions, requests. Write to Mallory, update him on the state of things, beg for sailors and money, two things the Confederate Navy never had enough of. Write to the local army commander, beg that any sailors or machinists or engineers or carpenters in the ranks be reassigned to him. Best of luck. Write to local bakers and butchers and meat packers for victuals.